A Lion Coward

No, not the Cowardly Lion.

In heraldry, a lion (or presumably other some other beast, although all of the examples I found in a cursory search were leonine) coward is a representation of the animal with, as one might expect, its tail tucked down in between its legs, instead of curled up behind.  Here's an example of a lion rampant coward (LJ users, you'll probably have to look at the original sidebernie.blogspot.com version).

On the bright side, this seems to be a purely descriptive term, and (again, following only a cursory search) does not actually seem to suggest anything about the name associated with the heraldic symbology.  That's just what that particular form of lion is called, to distinguish it from (for example) a lion rampant, or a lion rampant regardant, or a lion passant crowned, or a lion passant guardant, ducally gorged, or a lion sejant guardant erect, or a lion rampant queue-fourché, or a tricorporate lion, etc. etc.  And that's just lions.  For some light reading, I recommend http://www.archive.org/stream/completeguidetoh00foxdrich#page/n5/mode/2up.  Very interesting for the flipping through of.

Word for the Day -- Coverslut

Yes, ok, mildly salacious, I know.  But in fact, a coverslut is ": an outer garment worn to conceal untidy clothes."  It comes from the obvious sense of "cover" combined with an older, mostly now unused sense of slut that meant simply "a careless or untidy woman"-- still certainly not complimentary, but much tamer than the contemporary connotations would suggest.  The OED actually includes "apron" as a defining synonym.

They have bodies!

The Easter Island Statues!  Those big heads!  Have BODIES!  How did I not know about this?

http://www.eisp.org/

Apparently the statues were carved as entire people, and then for some reason were buried neck deep.

I... bwah?  [am boggled]

Rhode Island

Knowing that the full name of our smallest state was "Rhode Island and Providence Plantations", I was under the impression that Rhode Island was an actual island.  And it is-- or at least, was.  Or sort of is.  It's a bit complicated.

The island formerly known as Rhode Island is now called (when it's called anything at all) Aquidneck Island.  It's "official" name is still Rhode Island, but I guess that was too confusing, so they decided to informally keep using a name that had been around beforehand.  It's the big island in the middle of the bay that has Newport out on the end of it.  Although there is no question that this island was in fact called "Rhode Island" (or the Ile of Rods or Rhod-Island or Roode Eylant, depending on the source and its spelling), the source of the name "Rhode Island" is less certain.  The two main theories seem to be that either 1) it was named after the Isle of Rhodes, back in Olde Greece, or B) that the name derives from the Dutch for "red," supposedly from either a glimpse of vivid fall foliage or some reddish clay shoreline.

Eventually, Providence plantations (founded by Roger Williams after he was kicked out of Massachusetts) absorbed the dissident colonies on Aquidneck/Rhode Island, and they formed themselves into the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, which became (more or less without change) the State of Rhode Island etc.

Formication

I appear to have contracted a (very mild) case of what I have learned is technically called delusional parasitosis-- the irrational belief that there are bugs crawling on one's skin.  Our household has recently been fighting an minor infestation of extremely small ants (possibly odorous house ants), which seem completely uninterested in all of the ant traps we've strewn around.  And once you've discovered ants crawling on your head a couple of times in a row, I think it's only reasonable that you might develop a bit of a twitch.

DNAbc's

I've known since high school biology classes that all DNA is made up of four different chemicals, represented by the letters A, C, G, and T.  These can be put together in different sequences, making up the genetic diversity that keeps us all from looking like Pee Wee Herman, or Jeremy Clarkson, or [insert name of goofy-looking individual here].

The science of genetic engineering involves, among many other things, the careful rearranging of these components in different ways and orders, to create various effects.  This is still fairly straightforward, at least in principle-- it's terribly difficult in practice.  In fact, genetic manipulation usually happens on a much higher level, with the addition/removal/replacement of much larger complete sequences, or even entire chromosomes (which can contain well upwards of 100,000 nucleotides, the elements built out of those basic four chemicals).  As an interesting side note, apparently scientists in 2010 created an entire artificial genome from scratch, and successfully added it to an empty cell, creating the first ever completely artificial life form¹.

At any rate, things have gotten even more complicated.  Scientists are now starting to create nucleotide analogues that can be inserted into DNA sequences, allowing for even weirder possibilities².  They might not necessarily do anything radically different from the existing ones, but if nothing else it allows for some interesting artistic possibilities.  If we can add more letters to the genetic code, we might someday get poems written in a grain of rice, or designer crops with EULAs written right into their DNA.  GATGGACTTATTCATHEUSERAGREESTOTHEFOLLOWING...

¹http://www.sciencemag.org/content/329/5987/52

²http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13252-artificial-letters-added-to-lifes-alphabet.html

PS3 DVD

...M-O-U-S-E.

Ahem.

At any rate, I have just learned that our new PS3 has a helpful feature that our old DVD player lacked.  If you stopped the old DVD player in the middle of playback, it would of course remember its position-- as long as you didn't turn the machine completely off (unplug), or more importantly, as long as you didn't remove the DVD.  The PS3, possibly because of the associated hard drive, will not only remember where you stopped while the disc is in the drive, but it will also remember where you left off if you remove the disc and put it back later!  I found this out by accident, as it happens.  I was attempting to watch a library DVD that turned out to be heavily scratched.  I took it back and the librarian was nice enough to find me a different copy from another library.  When it arrived, I stuck it in the machine, and much to my surprise, it started up right where I had left off!

I'll admit that it's occurred to me that perhaps all DVD players of the current generation have this feature.  I wouldn't know-- the one that we replaced is approximately 4000 years old (you learn to interpret the cuneiform eventually).

While I'm on the subject, I am having entirely too much fun downloading free background themes for it.  Because I just can't resist the idea of plastering Wallace and Gromit icons all over it.

Atlantish

One contemporary theory holds that the myth of Atlantis, apparently first written about by Plato in a book that was, shall we say, probably not intended to be a travelogue, was actually based on the city of Helike, located on the coast of Greece about 40 miles West of Corinth.

It seems to be fairly well established that this city existed-- there are coins and other artifacts that still survive.  And it's a matter of record (as much as anything from that era is) that it was destroyed in 373 BC-- about 10-15 years before Plato's writings.  There are surviving reports from the time telling of earthquakes, fleeing animals, and the sudden submersion of the city, practically overnight.  And Plato almost certainly would have heard of the disaster, and he was the type of guy who would incorporate such a thing into a morality tale.  But it was fairly well hidden.  Despite written evidence, it was pretty thoroughly buried in silt, and only rediscovered about 10 years ago.  Excavations are proceeding slowly.

http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2112/05-0454.1

Regain Rogaine

The hair "regrowth" medication minoxidil is marketed in the US (primarily) under the name Rogaine.  However, the original name pitched by the ad team was actually Regaine.  The FDA shot that name down, though, since they thought that it was possibly fraudulent marketing (making promises it couldn't always keep).  McNEIL-PPC, Inc., the owners of the trademark, was forced to change it for domestic distribution.  Outside of the US, it's still mostly marketed as Regaine, since the rules are different, and (I guess) McNEIL-PPC, Inc. always liked that name better.

Das Blinkenlights

The principle of LEDs is basically the same as that of any other diode-- current, in the form of electrons, flows from one side to the other, but not back.  OK, technically the electrons go the other way around, because they're negative, and it's really confusing but its codified in convention and there's nothing we can do about it*.  Anyway, the particular materials used in LEDs can also be charged by current with a large number of "holes."  These are not physical holes, but rather a sort of "anti-" electron**.  They're empty spaces in atoms that normally would hold electrons, but for whatever reason don't.  When the electrons meet the holes, they "fall in."  This "fall" is a lot like a physical fall, in that it releases some potential energy, in the form of a photon***.  The amount of energy released determines the energy of the photon, and therefore the wavelength, and therefore the color.  Some colors (red) are a lot easier to generate, whereas some (blue) require some fairly complicated chemicals and materials to create.  White LEDs often rely on a two-stage approach, generating blue and ultraviolet photons that also activate a phosphor coating that in turn generates yellow photons, which mix with the blue to get something whitish.


*Damn you Benjamin Franklin!


**The actual antielectron is a positron, which is completely different, being a particle with the same properties as an electron except for opposite charge.  Holes are just absences of electrons.


***I accidentally typed "phorm of a photon" here, but decided to remove it.  You're welcome.